


Some Nights

by meils121



Series: Sing Me A Lullaby [2]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-17
Updated: 2014-09-17
Packaged: 2018-02-17 19:05:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2320136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meils121/pseuds/meils121
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parker knows she should go to bed too, but she can’t.  She tries to tell herself it’s just her job.  That her body’s grown used to late nights of crawling through ventilation shafts and rappelling down the sides of buildings.  It’s a good excuse, one she’s told herself before to feel better about these sorts of nights, but the problem with old excuses is that they stop working eventually.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Nights

            It’s late. Parker’s watched the sun set and the light bleed out from the sky. She’s heard the blare of car horns fade and listened to the increase in sirens. She’s been hanging from her rig for several hours now, suspended in midair several feet above Hardison’s living room. He and Eliot don’t say much while they’re watching the game. It’s been a long time since Hardison said his goodnights. Eliot stayed a little longer, but he’s gone now too, and it’s just Parker now.

            Parker knows she should go to bed too, but she can’t. She tries to tell herself it’s just her job. That her body’s grown used to late nights of crawling through ventilation shafts and rappelling down the sides of buildings. It’s a good excuse, one she’s told herself before to feel better about these sorts of nights, but the problem with old excuses is that they stop working eventually. Parker’s tired. She wants to sleep, wants to curl up with a warm blanket and soft pillows and forget everything. But she’s already tried that. It didn’t work, not tonight.

            She’s had nights like these before. Nights where her mind starts wandering places she’d really rather it didn’t, nights when the shadows don’t feel like her friends anymore. Parker doesn’t like those nights. She tries so hard to keep them from happening, but she’s learning that there isn’t anything to keep them away. She’s got all the lights on just to remind herself she’s not trapped in that cave again, and even that isn’t working so well.

            It’s really bad tonight. She thinks maybe she gets how Eliot feels now, just a little. What it’s like to have a person haunt you every time you close your eyes. Parker shudders. She can’t get warm anymore. All she can think of is that poor man and his frozen body, still trapped up on the mountain. She thinks of what Eliot said and it hurts.

            Parker kicks her feet gently to keep them from falling asleep. She feels safer up here. Ever since that day on the mountain she’s been scared of falling again. Falling and getting trapped. Getting hurt. She knows how dangerous her job is. One misstep and she’s falling down an elevator shaft. It’s not normally something she thinks about, but it’s been in her head a lot lately. She wishes she could think of something else.

            There’s the soft creak of floorboards. Hardison’s standing below her. “Figured you’d still be out here.” He says. “You coming down anytime soon?”

            Parker tries to shrug, but it doesn’t really work in the rig. “Don’t know.” She says. “It’s peaceful up here.”

            “You need sleep.” Hardison tells her. “You’re going to be off your game if you keep this up.”

            “If I keep what up?” Parker asks.

            “How much sleep have you gotten the past few nights?”

            “Five hours.” Parker admits. “Total.”

            “That’s what I thought.” Hardison sits down on the couch. “It’s late, Parker.”

            “I know.” Parker says.

            Hardison sighs. “It’s about the last job, right?” He asks. “That’s what’s got you so restless?”

            “I guess.” Parker says. She doesn’t really know what to say. She hasn’t told Hardison everything about what happened that day. Not about what Eliot said. Sometimes she’s scared that she’s got too little of a heart to ever understand everything that Hardison feels. Sometimes she think’s Hardison’s got too big of a heart, too many feelings.

            “How about coming down from there?” Hardison asks. “My neck’s starting to hurt from staring up at you.”

            “I never asked you to come out here.” Parker says, and maybe it comes off a little meaner than she meant.

            “You didn’t ask me to leave, either.” Hardison says gently. He’s got a point. Parker hesitates for a few moments, not wanting to leave the safety of her rig. But eventually she lowers herself to the floor and unbuckles the harness. Her body feels too heavy and her legs too weak. She drops the harness and it falls to the floor. The noise it makes is too loud in the middle of the night. Parker flinches.

            “Parker.” Hardison says as she curls up in the leather chair. If she can’t be hanging in midair she wants to be somewhere small and safe, and this is the closest she’s going to get right now.

            “What?” She asks.

            “Thought I heard voices.” Eliot says from elsewhere in the apartment. She listens to him walk down the hallway. He stops in the doorway to the living room. Parker doesn’t move as he looks between her and Hardison carefully before taking a seat next to Hardison on the couch.

            “I thought you were sleeping again.” Parker says, because it’s easier to turn the focus on Eliot than explain why she’s not sleeping.

            Eliot only shrugs. “I only sleep a few hours at a time anyways.” He says. “I woke up and wanted to get a drink.”

            “Oh.” Parker says.

            “Why are you up?” Eliot asks.

            “Don’t know.” Parker says at the same time Hardison says, “The last job.”

            “That was a bad one.” Eliot agrees. His voice is low and easy. Parker knows it wasn’t really bad, not by his standards. Not for the first time she wonders how Eliot still gets up each morning.

            “I can’t get warm.” Parker admits quietly. She curls up into herself more, clutching her knees to her chest and making herself as small as possible. “And I don’t feel safe on the ground anymore. I’m scared of falling.”

            Eliot smiles. Parker would almost be hurt except deep down she knows Eliot’s not laughing at her. It’s more a reassuring smile. “You know how that sounds coming from someone who’s spent most of the past week hanging ten feet off the ground?”

            “I trust my rig.” Parker says. She rubs at her eyes tiredly. The bright light is starting to hurt, but she’s not ready to be in darkness. Not yet. “We just put a foot down and the ground gave out from under us, Eliot. It just disappeared.”

            Eliot’s smile fades. He looks over at Hardison and runs a hand through his hair. “That’s why all the lights are on? You’re scared of getting trapped in the cave again?”

            “Yeah.” Parker says.

            Eliot looks like he wants to say something but he doesn’t. He just claps a hand on Hardison’s shoulder. Hardison looks at him, and Parker thinks maybe even if she never said anything to Hardison, maybe Eliot did. She’s not sure how she feels about that.

            “Look, Parker.” Hardison says. “I know I wasn’t there and I don’t know what it’s like to be trapped or anything, but you know it’s okay to talk to me about it.”

            Parker takes a deep breath and it feels like maybe she can talk about it. But the next breath she takes turns into a sob, and the next thing she knows she’s burying her face in her arms and crying harder than she has in a very long time. She feels completely alone and lost. Not even the lights can save her from the darkness now. That place in her mind where she keeps the bad memories locked away opens and she can barely breathe as they sweep over her.

            Parker sees the frozen body and swirling snow. She feels the cold rush of wind and listens to it howl around her. Then everything goes black and her mind starts racing, back to before she cured herself of her claustrophobia. Back to when tiny closets were where she wedged herself when her third foster dad came back drunk. Back to when she got hurried off to a too dark bedroom whenever her second foster mom wanted to go out. Back to when the older kids at her fifth foster home trapped her in the basement for hours, laughing at her desperate cries to be let out.

            There’s a hand on her shoulder and Parker cries out. She’s not sure if it’s a monster from under her bed or if she’s about to get a smack across the face, but either way she’s terrified. She lashes out, feeling her feet hit something solid. She twists away from the hand on her shoulder.

            “Hey, hey, easy.” Says a voice, and there are strong arms wrapping around her and lifting her up. She’s been held tight against a firm chest and slowly the bad memories bleed away. When her mind finally starts to feel a little more under control she finds herself on the couch between Hardison and Eliot. Parker curls into Hardison, twisting her fingers into his shirt. It takes her a while to realize that Eliot’s singing, his voice soft and soothing, and Parker closes her eyes and tries to focus on the words and the soft material she’s clutching in her hand.  

            “Sorry.” Parker says when she finds her voice.

            “There’s nothing to be sorry for.” Hardison says. “It’s okay to be afraid.”

            “Can we stay here?” Parker asks, her voice tiny and scared. She doesn’t normally ask much of the others. She likes being independent. Parker knows other people don’t understand her, and she’s fine with that. Normally. Tonight she wants something, wants something so badly and is so scared that she’s trusting the others too much with her weirdness.

            “Yeah.” Hardison says, and it’s not judgment that Parker hears in his voice. “Yeah, we can stay here.”

            “And leave the lights on?”

            Eliot stops singing long enough to say, “We’ll leave the lights on. I promise.”

            Hardison pulls a blanket over the three of them and Parker smiles. She doesn’t feel like she’s going to fall, not anymore. Not nestled between the two people she trusts most in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are appreciated!


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